seriously.
ryan's apartment is not alone in this. i guess it's super common, probably because you almost always take your shoes off before entering homes and sometimes even businesses. i'm totally going to have heated floors when i build my dream house one day.. and public toilet seats? heavenly! no need to balance a squat here - they have automatic cleaners prior to each use with one push of a button. koreans like their buttons. and they are also apparently easily embarrassed by loud bodily noises (ie: farts), and so toilets come with buttons that play music or a flushing noise so your eh-hem's are drowned out by other (more pleasant) noises. there are also buttons for a snazzy bottom cleaning in two levels, simple butt spray and full on bidet. i'll admit, i didn't try ALL the buttons..
so day one in korea. and discovered that on mondays, everything is closed. all the museums - closed. even the bus tour that would give us a nice overview of the city - not running. so there go the plans we made last night! after some more research came up with a decent plan B, so we headed over to the cheonggye stream area to walk around. it's primarily a shopping area, but had a few 'places of interest' which was better than sitting in an apartment all day. navigated our way on the subways fairly easily - they're very user friendly and well marked (overall). above ground is a different story..
the only map we had was a schematic, so we could only guess distances and directions. and there was no signage above ground. grrrrrreat. and so of course we walked in every direction except the one we needed to go into. we did wander by namdaemun (great south gate) which is actually korea's national treasure numero uno, kinda cool. and we saw a ton of carpet selling shops, in case we needed a carpet. asked a cashier at a convenience store for help, but she was a native of thailand, so not only didn't speak much english, she didn't speak much korean and wasn't familiar with the area. through sign we communicated "water/stream" and she pointed us the opposite way we came, so that eventually we found the stream. YAY. it was exactly that. a stream. lined by really tall buildings.
we walked along the stream, which was pretty, especially with the water running over the partially ice-covered river stones. after a while we were nearly frozen from the cold, so wandered back up to street level and found our way into probably one of the most memorable parts of my time in korea. this market - which was probably one of many around the city - was unlike anything i had seen. the food! it stretched on in every direction. i didn't recognize any of it, but it all looked incredibly yummy. i wanted to try it all. we wandered around to try to find if any stalls had english words, but eventually just followed the lead of another person and, after a lot of confusion (which included the owner scolding us in korean - hey! we did exactly what the man in front of us did!), ended up with this pancake thing. satisfied we headed back towards the stream, passing countless xmas shops. then tool shops. then fabric stores. it always makes me laugh how they cluster stores together - you think they'd all fail from the competition.
back down to the stream, saw "the largest ceramic painting in the world". it was neat, actually. basically a picture of a royal procession. came across an underground art gallery with a display of paraplegic sporting events (later found out the exhibition is always changing). at the end of the stream was a giormous xmas tree, sponsored by citibank ha. frozen again, found our way into a very americanized coffee shop (tom toms) and got a splendid mint hot chocolate. made our way back to the apartment to meet up with ryan. after chatting for a bit made our way to our first buddhist temple, bongeun-sa, the leading training center for zen meditation. despite my trepidation about facing anything buddhist related (thanks to my heart break in boston - maybe traveling to 2 buddhist nations at this time wasn't the *smartest* idea) i must admit that under the moonlight, the temple's beauty erased those fears and the sadness, even if only for a moment.
afterwards, made our way to our first sit-down meal, the korean bbq. it was.. interesting. all sorts of side dishes, including red bean paste, bean sprout soup and the ubiquitous kimchi, as well as the main dishes which were pork based. quite spicy too - my mouth was definitely tingling! found our way through a massive mass where we encountered plenty of couple matching (including matching underwear HA - i'll have to remember that in the future!) and, possibly the best sight for sore eyes - dunkin donuts. mmmmm. back to the apartment to process all the sights, culture shock and emotions i'm just beginning to experience on this trip. it will truly be a journey, in all aspects of the term.
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